Monday, September 3, 2001		Article

Store 1.7 MB on 1.44 MB floppy
Vipul Verma

IN the present day world of CDs and DVDs, a floppy is fast losing its importance as new storage mediums like Zip drives and CD writers are not only quite efficient but also hold up voluminous data in comparison to the floppies. All said and done, floppies have not yet become a thing of past and computer users still find it useful to store and carry data. One reason for floppy’s popularity is that just like the hard disk, it has also been a part of standard installation since long. Practically, all PCs normally have a floppy drive whereas in case of a zip drive there is no guarantee that the PC at the other end, where you would like to use the stored data would also have a zip drive to restore data saved on diskettes. Floppies, thus still enjoy prominence when it comes to storing and saving small data.

Despite being useful and practical, many persons still cannot use floppy disk to the fullest due to their ignorance about many outstanding features

Most of the computer users might wonder here that except for formatting the disk and copying files on it, what other function a floppy can perform. You can add a lot of value, space and convenience in working with floppy drives.

Managing the floppy begins with formatting it. Normally, we format the floppy, either by giving the command >format A: (where A is the drive letter for the floppy drive) or right click on the floppy icon in My Computer or Windows explorer and select format to format the floppy drive. This is not the right method of formatting the disk. Instead of using My Computer or Windows explorer method for formatting the floppy disk, try using the MS DOS prompt for formatting. Here also, the command > Format A: is not sufficient. Instead type at the DOS prompt, Format A: /u.

This method of formatting is much superior to the conventional method, which does not involve the use of any key as this format is good for multi-tasking. Thus you can perform other tasks while formatting the disk or copying files to disk. This method not only saves time by doing several tasks together and formatting the disk faster but also provides you more disk space. The key /u means unconditional format, which means that it won’t save unformat information thus yielding a faster format and more free disk space.

Normal formatting writes back some data on your disk in the form of unformat information. However, the use of this key eliminates the need for such information and thus creates modr space on the diskette. Similarly if you wish to erase your floppy disk completely, then you should use the command Format A: /u/q.

This method of formatting saves you from the normal long procedure of formatting by bypassing several steps, which forms the part of normal formatting process and it quickly formats your floppy. However, this method of formatting is good for storing temporary data, which you may not require for long time and may even have to delete after some time as this method of formatting is not error free. If you wish to store some permanent data then it is advisable to use previous method of formatting.

If in the process of formatting some errors are reported then in order to correct this problem, run scandisk in through mode for the floppy disk. If the problem is repairable, then scandisk will repair the problem and will make it error free. However, if it is not repairable scan disk will report it. Normally, bad sectors are the errors, which are non repairable and you should prefer not to use the floppy disk having bad sectors.

After formatting the floppy drive properly, you are one step through in using your floppy better. Now, comes storing the data on your floppy drive. Normally, the capacity of a floppy drive is only 1.44 MB and it cannot store data more than this. Now, what if you have to store more data than the overall capacity of the diskette. Well! The first logical answer would be to zip the data using the normal file zipping features. Though there is not doubt that zipping the file would put in more data in a floppy, but by normal zipping you cannot store more than 1.44 MB on a floppy drive.

So, if your want more then you can use DMF or distribution media format to store as much as 1.7 MB on a floppy drive. The DMF format, which became extinct before becoming popular in mid 90’s due to CD ROM’s getting more popular as a medium to transfer data, is actually quite effective and may also prove useful for floppy users. However, for using this format, you will be required to format the floppy disk with DMF. And for formatting the disk with DMF, you will need software called Winimage, which is available at www.winimage.com. This way you can really get the leveraged performance from your floppy disk and can use it more effectively.

It is something like overclocking your floppy, though not literally. But, what if you have to store more data than 1.7 MB. Normally computer user’s will say that it’s the limit of the floppy drive and we shall have to look for more options available in the form of zip drives and CD writers.

However, it is not true as you can use your floppies to store data more than 1.7 MB mentioned earlier, but the data would be split over a number of floppies. No matter how big a database you may have but it can be saved on floppies. In order to use the data on more than one floppy you will need a third part software like PKZip 2.04g utility available at www.pkware.com. This is a popular compression utility, which can also be used to break file to save on more than one floppy. However, you have to use this utility along with the -& parameter to not only compress the data, but to span it across as many floppies as necessary. If you cannot compress the data and yet spread it over several floppies, then you will need the software called FSplit available at www.ffyon.com or http://computing.netscape.com/computing/download/shareware/main.tmpl.